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The House has passed a motion that stated that the free trade agreement TTIP should not affect the Dutch legal system and Dutch democracy.

“Through TTIP, eg, McDonald’s can force us to set lower standards for working conditions, working hours and compensation of employees. It threatens the democratic process here. You can not just put democracy in brackets,” said Christian Union MP Segers, who proposed the motion.

This ensures businesses can submit claims in a country if they feel that their interests are violated by those countries. For example if a company can not sell certain products, cannot build a nuclear power plant or have to comply with environmental and health regulations.

The government is basically for TTIP but Minister Ploumen in the negotiations is busy with modifications of the treaty.

Parliament, after hearing the deliberation,

whereas our constitutional democracy and values ​​such as human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality and protection of the environment and human rights must be guaranteed;

Spring has sprung and Easter is right around the corner. That means the Easter Bunny is on the minds of many children.

And on the minds of many adults is the age-old question…..

Is the Easter Bunny a rabbit or a hare?

As many of our readers know, hares and rabbits are cousins. The good news for all candy-lovers is that both are well equipped by nature to handle the tasks that come with being the Easter Bunny.

Rabbit vs. Hare

It’s actually the European hare, or brown hare, that holds the impressive credential of being the original Easter Bunny. At least according to a Germanic legend dating back to the 1500s. The ritual of children preparing nests and eagerly anticipating the arrival of Oster Haas (Easter hare), who delivers brightly colored eggs on Easter morning, has taken place in German-speaking countries for centuries.

In the United States the cottontail rabbit has been designated as the official deliverer of Easter treats. This is easily evidenced by the lyrics in popular holiday tunes such as “Peter Cottontail,” and the presence of that signature fluffy white behind in every commercial rendition of the Easter Rabbit imaginable.

How are the Easter Hare (brown hare) and the Easter Rabbit (cottontail rabbit) equipped for the daunting tasks associated with their profession?

Let’s take a closer look at the unique features of these members of the family Leporidae to find out.

It goes without saying that the job of the Easter Rabbit requires lots of stamina and endurance. This small mammal must accomplish the seemingly impossible task of delivering hundreds of thousands of eggs to children in a single night. Both rabbits and hares are primarily nocturnal creatures, thus able to stay alert and on-task the entire Saturday night prior. Their most productive hours are at dawn and dusk, times of heightened activity and energy for the rabbit and hare. Both species are equipped with large eyes for seeing at night, and their large ears allow them to detect territorial intrusions.

Lickety Split

The forefeet and hindfeet of rabbits and hares have strong claws and a special type of thick hair on the lower surfaces that provides better gripping. Not only does this adaptation aid with running on uneven terrain, it may also allow for the skillful carrying and maneuvering of multiple Easter baskets with minimal slippage (and broken eggs).

With their longer hind legs, European hares have a competitive edge over cottontail rabbits, able to reach a running speed of 50 miles per hour. The agile hare has the speed and skills to outrun and outwit predators. Cottontails move at a swift, but decidedly slower pace than hares, and often rely on surface depressions and burrows to conceal themselves. So far, both the hare and rabbit have managed to elude humans on every Easter Sunday to date—an incredible feat indeed.

Though it would completely debunk the theory that there is just one Easter Rabbit, it wouldn’t be a stretch of the imagination to assume that egg-delivery is a task shared by a complex, vast network of hundreds, if not thousands of rabbits. There certainly are enough of them to cover all the territory. It’s no secret that rabbits and hares are an exceptionally fertile and active lot, often producing dozens of offspring over the course of lifetime.

Newborn hares would most quickly be able to jump on board and help with Easter tasks. Just minutes after being born, they are fully-furred and able to run around with relative ease. Alternately, newborn rabbits are ill-suited for just about any activity; they are born blind and naked, and require much coddling by their mothers before venturing out in the world.

On the Job Satisfaction

One has to wonder what the glamour and allure in being the Easter Bunny might be. One of the draws may be unlimited quantities food. While children drool over the chocolate eggs and other sweets delivered to them on Easter Sunday, rabbits and hares are no doubt enticed by their favorite edibles—grass and clover—found in many backyards. Perhaps the payoff is the pleasure of seeing the smiles on children’s faces when they discover the colorful Easter eggs that have been left for them. Or maybe it is the honor in upholding tradition, year after year.

Whatever the reward or rewards, you’ve got to commend the Easter Rabbit and the Easter Hare for hundreds of years of excellent service and on a job well done.

Reports issued over the past week suggest that child poverty in America is more widespread than at any time in the last 50 years. For all the claims of economic “recovery” in the United States, the reality for the new generation of the working class is one of ever-deeper social deprivation.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation publishes the annual Kids Count report on child poverty, which was the source of state-by-state reports issued last week. These reports use the new Supplemental Poverty Measure, developed by the Census Bureau, which includes the impact of government benefit programs like food stamps and unemployment compensation, as well as state social programs, and accounts for variations in the cost of living as well.

The result is a picture of the United States with a markedly different regional distribution of child poverty than usually presented. The state with the highest child poverty rate is California, the most populous, at a staggering 27 percent, followed by neighboring Arizona and Nevada, each at 22 percent.

The child poverty rate of California is much higher than figures previously reported, because the cost of living in the state is higher. Moreover, many of the poorest immigrant families are not enrolled in federal social programs because they are undocumented or face language barriers. The same conditions apply in Arizona and Nevada.

The other major centers of child poverty in the United States are the long-impoverished states of the rural Deep South, and the more recently devastated states of the industrial Midwest, where conditions of life for the working class have deteriorated the most rapidly over the past ten years.

It is a remarkable fact, documented in a separate report issued February 23 by the Catholic charity Bread for the World, that African-American child poverty rates are actually worse in the Midwest states of Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Indiana than in the traditionally poorest parts of the Deep South, including Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama.

Several of the Midwest states have replaced Mississippi at the bottom of one or another social index. Iowa has the worst poverty rate for African-American children. Indiana has the highest rate of teens attempting or seriously considering suicide.

The most remarkable transformation is in Michigan, once the center of American industry with the highest working-class standard of living of any state. Michigan is the only major US state whose overall poverty rate is actually worse now than in 1960.

This half-century of decline is a devastating indictment of the failure of the American trade unions, which have collaborated in the systematic impoverishment of the working class in what was once their undisputed stronghold.

…

In Detroit, once the industrial capital of the world’s richest country, the child poverty rate was 59 percent in 2012, up from 44.3 percent in 2006.

Cleveland, also devastated by steel and auto plant closings, was the only other major US city with a child poverty rate of over 50 percent.

The Detroit figure undoubtedly understates the social catastrophe in the Motor City, since it comes from a study concluded before the state-imposed emergency manager put the city into bankruptcy in the summer of 2013, leading to drastic cuts in wages, benefits and pensions for city workers and retirees.

Wayne County, which includes Detroit, had the highest child poverty rate of any of Michigan’s 82 counties. Southeast Michigan, which includes the entire Detroit metropolitan area, endured an overall rise in child poverty rates from 18.9 percent in 2006 to 27 percent in 2012.

The state-by-state reports issued by Kids Count were accompanied by a press release by the Casey Foundation noting that the child poverty rate in the United States would nearly double, from 18 percent to 33 percent, without social programs like food stamps, school meals, Medicaid and the Earned Income Tax Credit.

This was issued as a warning of the effect of widely expected budget cuts in these critical programs. It coincided with the first hearing before the House Agriculture Committee on plans to attack the federal food stamp program by imposing work requirements and other restrictions to limit eligibility.

The food stamp program has already suffered through two rounds of budget cuts agreed on in bipartisan deals between the Obama White House and congressional Republicans, which cut $1 billion and $5 billion respectively from the program. Now that Republicans control both houses of Congress, they will press for even more sweeping cuts in a program that helps feed 47 million low-income people, many of them children.

STRIKING American oil workers confronted “aloof” industry fat cats at an exclusive London dinner on Thursday — where the man who could resolve their dispute was the star speaker.

Staff at nine refineries from California to Kentucky, operated by different firms, walked out on February 1 after industry negotiators refused to incorporate key safety clauses into their next three-year agreement with unions.

The United Steelworkers union (USW)-led strikers were joined by workers from Indiana and Ohio refineries on February 9.

In an exclusive interview with the Morning Star, USW activists visiting London this week said up to 30,000 workers at 63 plants could be affected if the union is forced to escalate strike action.

Reps met with officers from general union Unite before protesting outside the International Petroleum week dinner at the Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane — where industry bigwigs were paying a minimum of £300 a head for a four-course feast.

And in a keynote address, Royal Dutch Shell CEO Ben van Beurden, whose firm is leading negotiations on behalf of refinery bosses, called on the industry to be “less aloof, more assertive.”

“So, to make our voice heard, our sector needs to enter into the public debate alongside other credible parties — ranging from academics to non-governmental organisations and policymakers,” he told diners.

The strike by more than 5,000 oil workers in the US has entered its second week. Behind-the-scenes negotiations between the United Steelworkers and the lead industry bargainer, Royal Dutch Shell, have been put off by the company until February 18, following an offer by the USW on Wednesday: here.

The current strike of US oil refinery workers raises many of the same issues that arose in the 1980 national strike. Once again, workers face attacks on wages, safety, pensions and health benefits: here.

The city assembly voted Thursday on the motion, saying Hashimoto’s comments created confusion and tarnished the city’s image. Though the motion has no legal implication for Hashimoto, the governor of Osaka said if it is approved, the mayor may have to resign but could re-take the post in a new election. Earlier this month, the mayor said the military brothels had been “necessary” at the time to maintain discipline in the Japanese army. His comments sparked outrage both in international community and Japan.

“Comfort women” is a euphemism coined by the Japanese military for its practice of forcing women to act as sex slaves for soldiers prior to and during World War II. Approximately 200,000 women in Asian countries occupied by Japan were herded into “comfort stations” where the brutal conditions led many to commit suicide. Women were often lured with phony promises of work in factories.

Abe criticized history textbooks printed by McGraw-Hill Education dealing with the issue. “I just looked at a document, McGraw-Hill’s textbook, and I was shocked,” the prime minister said. “This kind of textbook is being used in the United States, as we did not protest the things we should have, or we failed to correct the things we should have.”

The Japanese government has demanded that McGraw Hill revise the books. Officials from Japan’s Consulate General in New York met with the publishing company in December to voice their complaints. The company rejected Tokyo’s objections saying, “Scholars are aligned behind the historical fact of ‘comfort women’ and we unequivocally stand behind the writing, research and presentation of our authors.”

A large number of the women forced to serve as sex slaves came from Korea, but others were from China, the Philippines, Indonesia, and other countries. Many were too ashamed to speak about their horrific experiences and only began coming forward in the early 1990s. In 1993, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono issued a formal but limited apology—known as the Kono Statement—to the victims.

Abe, who came to office in 2012, has been pressing for a revision of the Kono Statement. His government established a panel of so-called experts to examine the testimonies of former comfort women that formed the basis of the Kono Statement. Last June, the panel claimed that there was a lack of evidence that the women had been “forced” to serve as sex slaves. While not formally calling for the repeal of the Kono Statement, the purpose was clearly to cast doubt on the crimes of imperial Japan.

Right-wing apologists for the Japanese military have long claimed that the comfort women were not sex slaves, but were prostitutes. As a result, they conclude, the Japanese army was no different from other armed forces. In reality, the Japanese military organised and ran the “comfort stations.” Whether or not women were tricked or coerced into these hell-holes, they were not free to leave or to refuse to have sex with the soldiers.

Within Japan, extreme nationalists have targeted the liberal Asahi Shimbun over the issue. The newspaper last year retracted 18 articles published in the 1980s and 1990s dealing with comfort women. The articles were based on the testimony of Seiji Yoshida, a soldier who claimed to have rounded up women on Jeju Island in South Korea for the military brothels. Before his death in 2000, Yoshida admitted to changing certain aspects of his story.

The Abe government and its right-wing ideological allies have seized on the Asahi Shimbun’s retractions to claim all evidence of the crimes against comfort women is false. Led by Shoichi Watanabe, a professor at Sofia University, more than 10,000 have joined a lawsuit against the paper. Watanabe not only denies that women were forced into sexual slavery but also that the 1937 Rape of Nanking occurred, during which 300,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians were massacred by the Japanese army.

These attempts to justify the past crimes of Japanese imperialism are in order to prepare for future wars. Last summer, Abe’s cabinet approved the “reinterpretation” of the constitution to allow for “collective self-defense.” This would enable Japan to take part in US wars of aggression particularly aimed against China. The United States is pushing Japan to play a larger role in Asia as part of the US “pivot to Asia” which is aimed at subordinating China to Washington’s economic and strategic interests.

Abe’s cabinet is stacked with ultra-right wing officials with connections to Nippon Kaigi, or Japan Conference, which promotes the lie that Japan went to war in the 1930s to liberate Asia from Western imperialism. It intends to revise textbooks in Japan to promote “patriotic values,” opposes gender equality, and erase war crimes such as the Rape of Nanking.

To serve this agenda, Abe also stated last week that a new, litigation bureau in the Justice Ministry would be created to handle lawsuits against Japan, claiming that they “seriously affected the nation’s honor.” While former comfort women have filed lawsuits against Japan, people forced to work as unpaid laborers in factories have also filed suits against Japanese companies. In May 2013, the South Korean Supreme Court ruled that a 1965 treaty between Seoul and Tokyo did not bar individuals from filing compensation claims.

A study released in January by the South Korean government found that 7.82 million Koreans were forced to work in Japanese factories between 1931 and 1945 at companies like Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Toyota, Nikon, and Nissan. In November 2013, the Gwangju Local Court in South Korea ruled against Mitsubishi Heavy Industries after several women filed compensation claims. Nippon Steel Corporation lost a similar case that year in Seoul and Busan high courts. Both companies have appealed.

South Korean governments regularly exploit Japanese war crimes to engage in its own historical revisionism to cover up the role of Korean leaders in collaborating with Imperial Japan. Many within the South Korean elite enjoy their positions today thanks to their families’ willingness to serve Japanese colonial rule, which lasted from 1910–1945. This includes President Park Geun-hye whose father, the military dictator Park Chung-hee, was an officer in Japan’s Kwantung Army.

Japan’s authorities have seized the passport of a journalist planning to travel to Syria, local media say. It was necessary to confiscate Yuichi Sugimoto’s passport in order to protect his life, the authorities said. The 59-year-old photographer, who had planned to enter Syria on 27 February, described the move as a threat to the freedom of press: here.